THE BENCHMARK JUST SHIFTED.
I’ve worked in tourism and destination marketing for long enough to know this: the things that actually move the needle on a place brand are almost never the brochures, the taglines, the campaigns or the slogans.
They’re the moments of collective, lived experience. The ones that shift how we, as locals, feel about where we live ❤️
And this weekend, Zest Fest did exactly that.
Orange City Council delivered a second year of this event and it was genuinely city-level good. I kept looking around and thinking: this is what happens when civic spaces are activated with imagination.
Road closures become world-building.
Parks become creative infrastructure.
Our CBD isn’t just a place we drive through, it becomes a place we belong inside.
The volume of people. The cross-section of community. The level of planning. The goodwill and vibe of it all. Council proved that 2024 wasn’t a fluke year. That wasn’t novelty. They backed it up and they levelled it up in 2025.
I’ve spent years inside the machinery of destination marketing. Four years at Orange360 when the entire organisation launched, countless FOOD Week and Wine Festival years deep behind the curtain (no, I'm not the Wizard - more like a Flying Monkey 😉).
I’ve seen our region through many cycles of tourism theory, hype cycles, brand evolution, product maturation and cultural confidence.
And this felt different. It's exactly the kind of moment that signals the rise of regional operators stepping confidently into bigger identity territory.
Because events like this aren’t just “nice weekends out”. They are place-making assets.
They are community identity engines that strengthen belonging and increase pride.
They raise the standard - not just for Council - but for every single local and everyone participating in the visitor economy.
In Regional NSW, the VFR segment (visiting friends + relatives) is huge, representing roughly a third of all domestic visitation purpose.
These travellers don’t show up because we told them to. They show up because locals invite them into the magic they already believe in.
So the most powerful place branding strategy we have isn't more brochures / taglines / campaigns / slogans to convince outsiders.
It’s emotionally imprinting experiences on locals first, knowing that visitors follow the energy we create, not the other way around.
So here’s my soft provocation: this is the future of regional place branding. This is where the visitor economy is going
More identity.
More culture.
More creative civic activation.
Not more lists of “Things to do in Orange"
Not another “Top 10 wineries” carousel.
Not the standard “Weekend Itinerary for the {insert generic interest persona}”
If Zest Fest is the benchmark, Orange isn’t just competing regionally anymore.
We’re playing in a whole new league.
Roll on 2026 💃
This piece first appeared in Excessive Consumption - a weekly dispatch on culture, branding, politics and whatever other modern internet brain rot the algorithm has emotionally assigned me that week.
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